Ah, the wonderful sound of tennis balls being whacked across the tennis court around the world, particularly at Stade Roland Garros in mid May! Which brings us to the 243rd edition of Think Different, subtitled Tennis Mania Galore! I'm your host, Lumosityfan, and over the next two weeks, we will be discussing various questions based on the wonderful sport of tennis! But, before you embark on your two-week adventure, there are some important rules to go over, so let's go over them together (or suffer a foot fault):

1. Goal is to get the lowest number of points.
2. Correct answers will get the number of points equal to the number of people answering that response.
3. Incorrect answers will receive the SHEEP score plus 5.
4. Two bonuses:
5. TIMEOUT: 0 points
6. CHALLENGE: Receive SHEEP score
7. All answers must be given via the Google form link (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/14Ajzag ... s/viewform) by noon EDT Sunday, May 24th, 2015, the beginning of Roland Garros 2015.
8. Tiebreakers go as follows: # of correct answers, # of singletons, # of doubletons, # of sheeps, and submission time.
9. As always, no cheating!
10. Also, have fun!

Last edited by Lumosityfan on Sun May 17, 2015 10:09 pm, edited 2 times in total.

1. Let’s start with an easy question: Name a Grand Slam champion starting from the 1968 French Open, when Open Era Tennis began.
2. In 2014, Rafael Nadal won his 9th French Open title, the most amount by a man of a single tournament. There have only been 8 franchises in the NBA, MLB, NHL, and NFL that have won their respective championships at least 9 times. Name one.
3. The premier team competition of men’s tennis is called the Davis Cup. Name a country who has won the Davis Cup at least once.
4. The equivalent for the women is the Fed Cup. Name a country to have won the Fed Cup at least once.
5. The ATP Rankings began in 1973, the same year the Sears Tower finished being built. The Sears Tower stands at 1,730 feet from the ground to the pinnacle. Name a building that has a higher height to the pinnacle than the Sears Tower.
6. When Andy Murray won the 2013 Wimbledon Championships, he became the first British man to have won Wimbledon since Fred Perry in 1936. The same year, the Germans tried to prove their world supremacy and the supremacy of the Aryan race at the Berlin Olympics. Name a country to win at least 10 medals at the 1936 Olympics. (Use country names as they would have said them in 1936.)
7. On May 17th, 2015, Novak Djokovic won his 24th Masters 1000 Trophy in Rome. Name an integer factor of 24.
8. Name a men’s singles, women’s singles, men’s doubles, or women’s doubles player who has gotten #1 but never won a Grand Slam of any kind (excluding mixed doubles)
9. Name a player in the men’s or women’s game who has earned either 50 singles titles or 50 doubles titles according to the ATP or WTA.
10. Finally, name a man in singles to have earned the world #1 ranking for at least one week in his career.

Last edited by Lumosityfan on Mon May 18, 2015 7:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

Bamaman wrote:I do not understand question number two. More than eight teams have won a championship in pro sports.

I suspect that the complete "question" should read:

There have only been 8 franchises in the NBA, MLB, NHL, and NFL that have won their respective championships at least 9 times. Name one.
-or-
There have only been 8 franchises in the NBA, MLB, NHL, and NFL that have won their respective championships more than 9 times. Name one.

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I would have known who was the author of this game by the questions alone and no other information. Guess I better change my answer to #2 since I like Randy's interpretation better than what I guessed he was asking.

On question 5, are we defining a "building" as any free-standing structure, or does it also have to contain an inhabitable interior space? Do structures supported by ground cables, such as television or radio transmission towers, count?

On question 8, do the potential answers take into account only the Grand Slam results in the discipline in which a player achieved a number one ranking? In other words, if a top-ranked singles player won a Grand Slam in doubles, or vice versa, would he or she count as a valid answer?

9021amyers wrote:On question 5, are we defining a "building" as any free-standing structure, or does it also have to contain an inhabitable interior space? Do structures supported by ground cables, such as television or radio transmission towers, count?

On question 8, do the potential answers take into account only the Grand Slam results in the discipline in which a player achieved a number one ranking? In other words, if a top-ranked singles player won a Grand Slam in doubles, or vice versa, would he or she count as a valid answer?

5. Freestanding.

8. I'm counting answers for each individual discipline. Therefore, in your scenario, the answer would be wrong.

Bamaman wrote:On the first question, is that someone who has won just one Grand Slam tournament or all four? Either sex? Just singles or does it include doubles?

Was wondering this too...someone who's won any of the big 4 tourneys in the Open Era in any discipline, or someone who's won all four at some point?

Thanks, Lumosityfan!

The term "Grand Slam" in tennis can refer to all four major tournaments collectively, or to each major tournament individually. This is unlike golf, where the Grand Slam only refers to the former. Generally speaking, if a player is said to have won "a Grand Slam," it means one of the four majors; if a player is said to have won "the Grand Slam," it means all four in the same year. Only three singles players have achieved "the Grand Slam" in the open era, and only eleven have done the Career Grand Slam (winning all four majors over the course of a career). I assume the question means "Grand Slam" as in winning one of the four majors in men's and women's singles; that's already a very wide reference pool, and adding doubles titlists would make the question far too broad to manage the responses.

That said, I didn't write this quiz, and I already have a long list of ambiguities that I'm ready to point out as they arise.

9021amyers wrote:On question 5, are we defining a "building" as any free-standing structure, or does it also have to contain an inhabitable interior space? Do structures supported by ground cables, such as television or radio transmission towers, count?

On question 8, do the potential answers take into account only the Grand Slam results in the discipline in which a player achieved a number one ranking? In other words, if a top-ranked singles player won a Grand Slam in doubles, or vice versa, would he or she count as a valid answer?

5. Freestanding.

8. I'm counting answers for each individual discipline. Therefore, in your scenario, the answer would be wrong.

I've already submitted my answers, but I did some research after I sent them in. I have tell you, Question 8 is really bogus question if that's the way you're interpreting it. There are only seven possible correct answers (1 men's singles, 2 women's singles, 3 men's doubles, 1 women's doubles), and most of them border on the obscurest of the obscure. I'd be surprised if very many people will be able to come up with a right answer as it is currently written.

The more appropriate question would be, "Name a player who reached the number one ranking in either singles or doubles (excluding mixed doubles) without having first won a Grand Slam title in that discipline. That expands the number of possible correct answers to thirteen, and includes players who are more well known to the average person.